One pivotal moment where Kemono Friends shows its quiet excellence

Today I want to talk about the spear-point moment
in Kemono Friends. There will necessarily be spoilers and what I
write may not convince you, because by nature spear-points rely on
the weight of story that's come before them for their power.

Spear-points are often active and loud, like last year's spear-point
in Thunderbolt Fantasy, but they don't
have to be. Sometimes a spear-point is a quieter moment that would
not otherwise work without the weight of the spear the story has put
behind it; everything has been built up to allow this moment to exist
and to convince.

For most of its run, Kemono Friends was all about
the cheerful adventures of Kaban and the Friends in Japari Park. Sure, there
was some danger from things like the Ceruleans and the environment,
but it was the danger of a kid's show; it was there to create tension
and have our characters solve problems, such as in episode 9.
Then, at the end of episode 11, Kaban sacrifices herself to draw a
giant Cerulean away from the incapacitated Serval, ending up being
swallowed by it. This was quite something, as was the effects
on people watching.
Although this was an extremely powerful moment (and one fully earned
by the show's work to build up to it), it's not the big spear-point.
The spear-point is what happens the next episode, when Kaban basically
comes back from the dead.

Bringing people back from the dead is very hard to do well. To
truly sell it, the story must make it not merely excusable
but inevitable, the logical and emotional consequence at the
tip of the spear that was built piece by piece as the story
progressed. The logical steps of Kemono Friends' spear are
straightforward (I've put them in a sidebar), but what that
really means is that they're woven deep into the subtle worldbuilding
of the entire setting; they're straightforward because they're
foundational. Kemono Friends didn't surprise us with anything that
went into Kaban's return because by the time we got there we already
knew the pieces; we'd been shown them before bit by bit as part of
previous events. As far as logic went at the spear-point of Kaban's
return, it was inevitable.

But logic by itself isn't enough; returning from the dead needs effort
and emotion too, to give significance and weight to such a momentous
thing. So the final episode of Kemono Friends opens with an epic,
climactic running fight against the giant Cerulean, one that sees all
of the Friends we've met over the course of the series show up to help
out with their own abilities (for good reasons that go back to that
subtle worldbuilding). On the surface it's an attempt to rescue Kaban
from the Cerulean and defeat it, but it also makes us feel that all of
these Friends working together so hard and caring so much about Kaban
deserve more than to be left with nothing. They and especially Serval
have earned having Kaban come back. And so it comes to pass, with not
a dry eye in the house.

(It also helps that we the audience wanted Kaban to come back, so that
Kemono Friends could finish as the cheerful and good-natured show that
it had been all the way through up until then. Kaban's return is firmly
centered in the show's genre.)

Kaban's return from the lost is not a big explosive moment; it's not epic
in the way Shang's fight was last year,
or shocking in the way Kaban's sacrifice was. Instead, it's quietly,
intensely emotional. It's Serval embracing Kaban, crying as she repeats
what she said in the first episode, "I won't eat you!" It's a miracle
that is perfectly logical and completely earned, at the tip of a
meticulously crafted spear that stretches all the way back to the start
of the show.

Sidebar: The logic chain in question

Friends are created from
ordinary animals (or pieces of animals), and when swallowed by a
Cerulean, they are stripped of their Friend nature and reduced back
to their original animal form. Kaban is a Friend, and when she was
swallowed by the Cerulean she was reduced to a glowing ball which
would condense to her original form. But Kaban is a human and the
original form of a human is still a human, so when the ball evaporated
to reveal her animal form, it was still Kaban.

I won't call Kaban's nature a mystery of Kemono Friends
because it was always pretty obvious what she was to the
viewers. But it was the central pivot around which all of the
series revolved, and if we had any doubt about what she was, this
ended them; Kaban is a human Friend (and we know her origins). To quote the Professor, "They
[humans] truly are a mysterious species."